“What did that kid say?!” snickered the older boy on the stoop behind him. “Tercker-treat” the other mimicked in a thick Southern drawl. My little boy didn’t notice; his focus was on the candy entering his bag, but I was suddenly and deeply wounded.

Over the next few weeks I trained my ears to hear the accent that had apparently escaped my notice since my boy began to speak and, once I started to hear it, it was hard for me to ignore. “Biscuit” was “beis-cut,” “fire” was “far” and “well” was “wee-ll.” My boy’s tiny voice was adorable, but it didn’t sound as regionally ambiguous as I’d assumed.

We live in an urban center of Charlotte, N.C. Though it’s situated firmly in the South, it’s a city of transplants, many of whom carry the accents of their childhood. We also move in a circle of young professionals here in which deep Southern accents are a public rarity.

Each time my boy sputtered something with an evident accent, in the weeks after it was brought to my attention, I flinched from memories of how my speech has shaped the way the world interacts with me and how the speech of others has impacted how I interact with them.

I’m little, maybe 6 or 7. When our softball games are over the girls on our team sprint to the creek behind the ball fields to wade in the cool water and flip rocks until we find something squirmy or until our parents begin to call for us. My sister and I listen for our mom to call,“Girls!” or “Kids!” I’m glad she’s not a mother that attaches a “youns” to her “come on now!” The youns mothers, I know even then, belong to families with overlapping generations and parents who smoke in the car.

Years later: It’s my first job out of grad school. I’m in charge of teaching future mentors to guide youth in our community. I write the training with great care and memorize every line. After my presentation I feel exhilarated and energized. An attendee approaches me. “I’ve got to tell you,” he says, “the whole time you were speaking I just could not stop thinking about how adorable your little drawl is.” When I go home I reread the whole presentation out loud, paying careful mind to how my words sound. No one mentions an accent the second time I present.

Later still, I’m giving my preschooler a tour of my office when he stops and looks at me, confused. “Why you sound like that?” he asks. Like what, I ask. “Like different.” When we leave, I clasp him into his car seat and whisper “I love you” in his ear. “Now you talk like you, Mommy!” he says with glee, and I realize that the difference he’s picked up on is the way my own Southern accent disappears when I walk through my office door. After that I start to notice where else it disappears: at the bank when I’m asking for a home loan, at the music class where all the moms wear nicer clothes than me, at the doctor’s office when my son is sick and the nurse asks me if I understand how to administer his antibiotics.

In the weeks after the Halloween incident, I worried that I hadn’t done enough to ensure a future of open opportunities for my child. I had left my hometown after high school, gone to college, gotten a master’s degree, gotten a professional job and bought a home in a big city, and now my boy’s voice marked him as different from many of the kids in our new surroundings.

Like most parents, I want my son to have access to the life he desires and I fear that his emerging accent would shape others’ perceptions about him. Though I want my son to feel the immediate ease I do when I walk into a room full of Southern voices, I don’t want outsiders to read his voice as stupid or poor or backward.

I also wondered if I was doing him a disservice by allowing his accent to flourish, unchecked. Should I have carried my office voice home? Made sure his caretakers spoke as if they were from somewhere else? Asked him to repronounce words that he stretched out?

Over the past year and a half my son’s vocabulary has exploded. The almost-3-year-old who spoke quietly and sometimes struggled to share his thoughts has, at 4 and a half, turned into a child who can talk for hours about building things and “doctor stuff” and his acorn factory at school. As he’s begun to share more complex ideas and to give me a deeper picture into the things that matter to him, I’ve mostly stopped noticing his little drawl.

The past year has also offered me ample opportunity to reflect on my own experience with accents, both my own and those of others. The right accent can open doors to social circles, work opportunities and sense of belonging, but the wrong accent can close them.

When I reflect on the boys who mocked my son it’s plain that their teasing didn’t come from the fact that they couldn’t understand him but, instead, from the fact that his accent marked him as different.

My child’s accent will probably impact the way the world interacts with him from time to time. Maybe one day he’ll work in an office and use a voice that is regionally ambiguous. But I’m guessing that when he is an adult spending time with me and his dad, his voice will soften and slow and that those little twangs I noticed in his first words will emerge in the comfort of home.

Julia Pelly works for a girls empowerment nonprofit and lives with her husband and two young sons in North Carolina.